Why walking into another room makes you forget

Do you ever find yourself standing in a room in your home asking, 'Why am I here?' Not in an existential 'what is the purpose of life' sort of way, but in a 'I'm sure I've forgotten something but I just can't remember what' way. It's incredibly frustrating.

Well, it turns out we're not all losing the plot. Yay! Researchers have discovered these moments are actually a sign your brain is working well - and they've even dubbed it the Doorway Effect.

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Researchers from the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, taught 55 university students to play a computer game in which they moved through a virtual building, collecting and carrying objects from room to room. Every so often as the participants moved around the space, a picture of an object popped up on the screen.

If the object shown was the one they were carrying or had just put down, the participants clicked 'yes'. Sometimes these pictures appeared after the participant had walked into a room; other times they popped up while the participant was still in the middle of a room.

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Then, the experiment was repeated, but in real life. The results of both tests matched — walking through a doorway made the students forget what they were doing.

The researchers also checked to see if memory was impaired by travelling a certain distance — asking 'Is this what you're carrying?' after people had walked a certain distance within and between rooms. Within the same room, the students' memories were mostly fine — but entering a new room seemed to press a mental reset button.

So, the scientists concluded that our brains see doorways as a cut-off point.

This is because as we take in our new surroundings, our focus shifts and so our memory is compromised — as we can't concentrate properly on so many things at once.

So next time your family give each other 'should we worry?' looks, tell them you're experiencing the Doorway Effect.

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